A Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday.
Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking.
“To the family of the victim, I sincerely apologize for all of it,” Murphy said while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber and after a Christian pastor, his right hand on Murphy’s chest, prayed for the victim’s family, Murphy’s family and friends and the inmate.
“I hope this helps, if possible, give you closure,” Murphy said.
Said pilots are not being locked in a chamber where they will undergo execution. I'd wager most who are in bliss aren't even aware that they're very close to death. It seems probable their bliss is exclusively dependent on their ignorance of the present circumstances, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
My point isn't that nitro is worse than what we're doing now. It's that I don't think we know it's humane in every case. If the inmate is already suicidal or indifferent, it's probably how they'd want to go out. I just can't say that about the rest.
And I have no trouble believing that we can screw up getting 100% nitrogen saturation in a prisoner's containment. That would be a terrible thing to put someone through.
All these concerns are mitigated if we at least give the prisoner some choice in their exit, or especially if they are permitted life without parole as an alternative.
I'm not convinced Nitro is a silver bullet to this problem.
If anything, pilots are more likely to be aware of the effects of hypoxia, there are training courses for it. If the cabin depressurises above 10,000 feet, there isn't enough oxygen to breathe. It still catches them off guard.
Nitrogen suffocation is also the method used for assisted suicide in the handful of places that allow it. So it's not like it's completely untested for these purposes. While I haven't read the results of research done for this, I'm sure it has been extensive.
I don't think it's some sort of silver bullet - there isn't one. The solution is rehabilitation, which is hard, but we shouldn't be killing people just because the right way is harder. However, if we're going to kill people, then nitrogen suffocation is more humane than any other method.